In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Luke Jensen, a former US Marine and National Guard veteran turned psychedelic researcher and neurofeedback practitioner. After his own healing journey with PTSD, Luke now leads veteran-focused retreats in Peru and pioneers research on brain mapping with Ayahuasca and Wachuma.

We touch upon topics of:

  • Luke’s military background and PTSD healing journey (00:49–02:02)
  • His first powerful Ayahuasca experience in the jungle (02:06–04:03)
  • What to do when Ayahuasca “doesn’t work” right away (05:38–08:15)
  • Unconscious healing and the idea for brain scans during ceremony (08:15–10:19)
  • What is QEEG brain mapping and why Luke uses it (10:34–12:52)
  • Neurofeedback as a healing and spiritual optimization tool (12:52–16:06)
  • Importance of brain health in mental health recovery (16:31–18:35)
  • Working with UFC fighters and brain injury recovery (19:03–21:30)
  • First-ever brain imaging study on Wachuma (21:50–23:39)
  • Differences between Ayahuasca and Wachuma (24:10–25:47)
  • Science, skepticism, and cultural projections onto indigenous shamans (33:20–36:41)
  • The role of science in legitimizing traditional medicine (36:41–41:11)
  • How Luke became a self-taught neuroscientist outside academia (44:11–45:46)
  • Brainwaves 101: delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma explained (48:24–50:09)
  • Ego and the Default Mode Network (51:46–52:29)

If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com

Find more about Luke Jensen at neuroenlightenment.com

Transcript

Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.

Luke Jensen: Science is a modern religion. Everyone’s a skeptic. Their doctors doesn’t say, it’s on the news of science doesn’t say so. It’s not true. You and I know those experiences are powerful, but to change a culture between the civilization, we have to approach it in a scientific way.

I think that’s why we want to build up the data, and I think the more data, the more databases we have on these beautiful changes that happen over and over again, they’ll really. Give us a step forward to changing the culture. Your brainwaves is your energy signature of your brain. You have the four core brain waves, delta, theta, alpha, and beta and gamma.

Their waves going across the brain and by reading how they appear in the brain, we can see a lot about what’s going on. And these brainwaves are basically the physical structures of the brain, millions of neurons firing at once. That creates that wave. For someone from your retreat, I forget who she was, I mentioned the brain mapping and she goes, oh, is that like auras?

And I’m like because we’re taking an energy signature of that person. So for me, like a, an acupuncturist that looks at the tongue of the hologram and sees the health of the body, we can look at those brain waves and see different things. That’s that person’s energetic signature coming from their brain.

Sam Believ: Hi guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca podcast. As always, really the host Samie. Today I’m having a conversation with Luke Jensen. Luke is a former US Marine and a National Guard veteran. Stern psychedelic researcher and neurofeedback practitioner. After battling PTSD, he began working with Ayahuasca and Wachuma in Peru, where he now leads veteran focused retreats.

Luke is known for pioneering the first QEEG brain mapping studies on these plant medicines, bringing neuroscience with ancient healing traditions. This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability. Accessibility and authenticity. The Yra Connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.

Luke. Welcome to the show.

Luke Jensen: Hey, thanks for having me.

Sam Believ: Luke, tell us your story. I touched on it in in the bio, but. Can you go a little deeper? What brought

Luke Jensen: you? Yeah, so I I joined the United States military in 2003. It was right after nine 11, couple years after that.

At the time, it was the war on Terror, so it was a very patriarch kind in the United States. And I joined the Marine Corps because it’s the most challenging branch. I could do. And then six years later I switched to National Guard and Airborne Infantry Unit, and I deployed to Afghanistan in 2011. So that’s how my military career started.

Sam Believ: Cool. And then how was the journey from ex-military to what you do now?

Luke Jensen: Yeah, I went to Afghanistan and then. My views in the war changed a lot. What I was doing changed a lot, and there’s a whole story with that. But basically when I got back, I had severe anxiety symptoms. I wasn’t really sure what they were from.

And I also experienced like this extreme sense of, searching for my purpose in life, and this led me to Ayahuasca eventually. And about a couple years later, I went to Ayahuasca to try to find my purpose to help with my PTSD T symptoms. And just for something else, anything else that really helped me out.

Sam Believ: So how did it go the your Ayahuasca experience?

Luke Jensen: Yeah, the first time was like 10 years ago. It was in 2014. And when you read about these things, I read a lot of books at the time, but they really don’t explain what’s really gonna happen. So my first experience was extremely powerful. The first night I was there, actually nothing happened.

And sometimes this happens with people where nothing will happen. That first experience. But the second night was, just completely awe inspiring. I was in a ketos in the jungle and I was in a moloca that was about 20 feet off the ground ’cause it floods. So just the whole place was very interesting.

Had an eerie feel like you’re on a saline ship. ’cause when you’re in Aya Wase, everything moves a bit. So I was going these walkways near moving and I remember the time that someone said don’t stay outside too long because I was going to a tree and go to the bathroom, come back in.

But I was outside and I looked at the jungle and my first powerful experience on ayahuasca was looking at the jungle, and it was this pretty much experience of complete awe. I’ve never ever had in life at all. I looked through the jungle and it looked like everything was one and connected, and there was these lines of energy moving through everything, and everything was connected.

Everything was one. It was a very profound experience. And then part of ayahuasca is purging, so I purged over the side. I’m this walkway, 20 feet up, and what I see is the earth open up and accept all this negative energy coming out of me. I saw my purge go a thousand miles into the earth and this overall all acceptance.

So immediately I had a very. Powerful experience very quick. And then I went back to the moloca. I saw the shot, my healing people. I saw auras. Everything you can really think of. I was seen at this moment. It was extremely powerful, extremely magical. And it was, at that time I realized there was a lot more to the human existence than we, were in school in Western societies.

Sam Believ: That sounds really nice. I have I have quite, I’ve had. Quite a few of those. All feeling experiences were, one was actually pretty recent, maybe three months ago or so, I was in the ceremony. I was sitting outside of the maloca and we’re not in the jungle, but we’re, four, four Americans or Europeans.

They think we’re in a jungle, but it’s actually more of a countryside. There’s some forests, some pastures and a little bit of jungle. And I was sitting there and I just, I was just looking at. The nature, and I had this all awe feeling, but it was also accompanied with a realization that everything right now and every atom in the universe is exactly where it needs to be.

Luke Jensen: Yeah.

Sam Believ: There is no oh, I should have been this way, I should have been that way. No. This is how it is. And just like everything is perfect and the feeling of connectedness and. I remember I was kinda sitting there because one of the patients were freaking out and I was helping him out and I was so on my process as well and I was, I started, we just, normally we don’t do it, but I started talking to him and I was like, I just wish everyone can feel this at least once in their lab before they die.

But when you’re talking about your first ceremony and like lack of connection, I’m sure now you yourself as you as someone who organizes the retreats. You deal a lot with people like, oh, I’m not connecting. And this first of all talk about this, like how do you view this connection or lack of connection right now?

What do you explain to the people that come to your events? And then I have have an idea for a study that we can do together.

Luke Jensen: Okay. Just, I wanna touch upon that. Awe experience you had, I think is one of the most powerful experiences people have on planned medicines to look at the universe, the complete awe and wonderment and connectedness in that sense that everything’s perfect.

There’s something really special about that, and I agree that it’s these events. That really shape our spiritual lives, in my opinion, is not so much based on faith and we pay. Faith can come and go, but when you have an event where you’re connected like that, it allows you to feel differently and that feeling allows you connect to the universe differently.

So I really appreciate that. Yeah, my first experience, I was really preparing the whole time I was meditating. I was doing the proper ayahuasca diet. I think I was even eating every other day for a while for, and everything you do, I prepared a lot and nothing happened. My first ceremony and everyone else had these amazing experiences, just really powerful experiences.

I’m like, what the, what happened to me? So now that I’m more experienced with Ayahuasca, I agree. Sometimes Ayahuasca takes time to work into the system and sometimes yourself have to be open in a certain way and you have to let it happen. Being there myself and having people come down and people travel across the world for this experience and it’s really tough when, like the first ceremony, maybe first two ceremonies, nothing happens, but this is, the ayahuasca is still working on you no matter what.

Whether you experience a vision or not, the healing still happening and it takes that time to open up and to remind people that this isn’t just a quick pill, this is a process we have to experience.

Sam Believ: Yeah, so that’s that gave me the idea. So that’s exactly what I tell two people including, interestingly enough, we had a veteran who came to the retreat.

He did entire retreat and didn’t feel anything and we were like giving him more and more medicine and he was like, this is bullshit. It’s not working. And he left home really frustrated. He came back home, his wife said, you’ve changed his kids, said you’ve changed. And then six months afterwards he messaged me asking me to send him a logo of RO because he wanted to tattoo it.

And I was like, whatcha talking about you didn’t feel much right? So I was like. Even though his experience was largely unconscious, it like changed his life. And so we’re gonna go to the topic of brain scanning and everything you do, but I have this idea that we should do. We should scan people’s brains during the ceremony for the first few days, and especially focus on the people who are not connecting and compare their brain states when they’re supposedly not connecting to when they are connecting.

Because I have a feeling, and of course it’s just a theory that. Most of the work that’s done by ayahuasca is actually unconscious. And if we can prove it that, actually by the way, your brain looks exactly like the brain of a person that is deeply tripping and reporting all kinds of visions.

Maybe we could find a way. To prove that even though you’re not really feeling much, something is actually happening. Or maybe I’m wrong with that. Guess like what would you think the result would be of that study and how plausible is it for us to do something like that? And then maybe take the topic into the brain scanning idea.

Luke Jensen: Yeah. So when doing brain mapping, it is challenging. Sometimes do during ceremony unless someone has experience can sit still. So you have to keep that in mind because it’s very sensitive. It can be done for sure and we’ve done that, but that’s something to keep in mind. No, that’s a very interesting theory.

I think there’s definitely a process happening. Without the experience, is it increased with the experience? Is it same? Is it different? I’m not really sure. That’s a really good question. And sometimes I’ll go into a project thinking one thing and brain imaging a brain and the ex result, the result is not what I expected.

So just to figure out one way or another. Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s done that. That’d be interesting.

Sam Believ: Yeah. So talk to us about the brain scanning. ’cause that’s how, that’s gonna be a big part of that podcast today. What is what is it? Oh, how is the call properly? What is it that you do and why do you do it?

Luke Jensen: So I do what’s called QEG brain mapping. It’s basically reading the brainwaves. So an e, EG is what in the hospital, A raw brainwaves going across the screen. A-Q-E-E-G is quantitative and it puts the brainwaves in a topographical map and different spectrums, delta, theta, alpha, and beta. Those are major brainwaves and high brain waves appear.

We can see so many different things about people now. So we can see markers for depression, anxiety, head trauma focus issues. So the reason I got into this after the Marine Corps, I was in a really big search for healing after my deployment to Afghanistan. So I was looking for anything and everything, and I tried meditation, hypnosis acupuncture, yoga, and all those things helped a little bit, but none of ’em really shifted me in a way that I really needed.

And someone in Omaha, Nebraska, where I live, where I’m from, she brain mapped me. She was a friend. She did this brain map, this QEEG, and there was a marker for basically PTSD or anxiety. And for me at the time was very liberating. ’cause modern psychology really says there’s something wrong with you and you need to go into those deep issues.

And I was the kind of person, be a military guy to go talk to a. Psychiatrist or a therapist. But if I looked at our brain map and saw this brain pattern that was off, there’s a way to train it. And one way is neurofeedback. There’s different kinds of methods, but what I learned was neurofeedback.

It’s basically using the technology to train brainwaves. And when you train these brainwaves and you shift your state and shift how you feel, and once I started reading about it, I started reading everything about it, every book I could find, and I found out there’s a large spiritual component to brainwaves.

If you think of shamanism or you think of meditation, although there’s certain brainwaves, they’re accessing states, neurological states, and these states are trained. So I found it very interesting because for trained spiritual states, we could potentially use this technology to train people faster. Or maybe it’ll heal people faster.

So I had this inspiration that this technology would work very beautifully in conjunction with plant medicines. Not only could we brain map people pre retreat, post retreat and see the changes in the brain, but could also use this trained technology to enhance people to their peak ability, peak performance, peak spiritual abilities.

So this whole process started. I would say 10 years ago I’ve been reading about it and get, buying small devices. And five or six years ago, I met my mentor and I met him at a conference for neurofeedback and brain mapping. I told him my idea. I didn’t think anyone would really go for it because it sounded so foreign.

And he goes, I’ve been waiting to meet someone like you. I’ll train you. And it turns out his name is Dr. Suiter. It turns out he’s one of the top people in the field and he’s a zen Buddhist. He’s also, expert meditator and I would say a shaman, even though he doesn’t call himself that. So there’s this beautiful relationship that formed and I went back to Pru’s equipment and started brain mapping people and doing the work I’m doing now.

Sam Believ: Amazing. So it’s interesting that with this technology, like with mental health let’s say somebody’s depressed and then they. They feel not depressed or maybe less depressed, and it’s really hard to measure. But if you can scan the brain and say you’re depressed and you can scan the brain you’re no longer depressed.

Were you able to then eventually measure your brain and say I no longer have PTSD or is it completely gone or maybe it’s not gone. Or if it is gone, how long did it take?

Luke Jensen: Yeah, really good question. Brain mapping is one lens to look at the brain. It’s not really meant for diagnosis.

It’s meant for Hey, we see markers for this. We see markers for this, we see markers for this, and it offers a path to healing. So look at a brain map as a roadmap. Okay, if that area of the brain’s dysregulated, that’s what we call it. And we wanna, so for example, PTSD or anxiety pattern. Is high beta at the back of the brain.

If we train that down, that person should feel better. And so we’re basically working to make the brain more efficient, to make them feel better. So just like anything else. Like each person is differently. Some brains are more rigid and harder to move. So if trauma is deeper in the system, that brain might be more challenging.

But generally speaking, this brain train offers people unique way to heal. That’s different from talk therapy’s, different from drugs, different from plant medicines, and I love plan medicines, but it’s one more tool in the toolbox. And I think for those tough cases, especially like I was, I think that was one of my own toughest cases, it allowed a synergy.

For example, think of plant medicines. What do they do? They increased neuroplasticity. They increase the openness of the brain. Most depression, anxiety, for example, the brains come too rigid. It can’t think, novelly, it can’t think of novel solutions. Whether they’re feeling novelly or thinking of novel solutions to get out of whatever situation they might be in.

So the planned medicines opens up that neuroplasticity, and we can measure that with brain mapping. And what I do with the brain training is to increase that neuroplasticity even more so leveraging both off each other.

Sam Believ: Yeah. The synergy is is important because sometimes plant medicines can serve as.

Giving that flexibility and giving hope and giving relief, and then you can combine it with therapy or like in your case brain training. What is the, speaking about neuroplasticity and brain health in general what is the importance of the brain health and mental health?

Luke Jensen: It’s critical.

It’s critical. Most people understand, and neuroscience is bury this out, is that most mental health issues, 50% or more than that, are related to brain health. So when those things, when your brain’s not working right, you’re not gonna feel right. And you can really understand this with physical health, right?

If you have a poor diet, poor gut health, eating lots of sugars, not exercising, you’re not gonna feel gut. The same thing with the brain. If your brain over time, which we all have, in the life we live in the modern world, all brains have wear and tear from stress, from just going through life.

The diet we have and things like that. So if we can make the brain healthier, that person will feel better. So that’s a huge component of what we’re doing and how we look at it. I think often when people experience planned medicines or experience any kind of healing. They always have to make sure their physical health is part of that.

If there’s a liver issue, if there’s a thyroid issue. So you have to look at the wholeness of the person and you talk about the experience wearing off. That was the biggest things. I wanna put this field in or this neurofeedback side of it in. ’cause we train people in different places in the world with remote neurofeedback training and when they come to our retreats, we can send ’em home with their remote device and keep working with them because.

So plan medicines off this beautiful space of neuroplasticity and it’s like you were saying, this is a good place to pick up when people get home, pick up yoga, Qigong, many different practices. Meditation and ours, what we work with is neurofeedback. So that beautiful window of neuroplasticity is really amazing and people should always take advantage of it after Ayahuasca to do a new habit or change their life in a way that they want.

Sam Believ: Be careful with this beautiful window of neuroplasticity because it’s a double-edged sword. And it can also be, allow you to be more flexible in adopting negative habits. So that’s what we warn people every time. Talking about like brain brain health and mental health. Me and Luke and another person I interviewed a while ago, Ian McCall.

We’re now working on this idea to organize a, an ayahuasca retreat for UFC fighters, specifically here at low ira. And we will measure their brains because of the traumatic brain injury. So like traumatic, it’s. It’s probably as bad as it gets health brain health wise because their brains are like pretty scrambled, those really heavy hits.

Have you had any experience so far with traumatic brain injury working with it, with ayahuasca or brain entrainment? What do you know about that? What have you observed so far?

Luke Jensen: Yes, we do. And we have really fascinating GA on that. We had a a muy Kai fighter. She’s from Colorado. Her name’s Faith, and she came down to one of our retreats and she got cod.

She was knocked out about months before a retreat. So she had a significant pattern for inflammation and her brain. And then after one week, nine days of our retreat, three ayahuasca ceremonies and winchu ceremony, that brain inflammation went down significantly. Very significantly, it was almost not there anymore.

So yeah, I think we’re looking at something really unique for fighters, for anyone with head trauma, veterans or anyone else. Fighters has such a big thing that community ayahuasca can definitely, from preliminary observation, help with head trauma.

Sam Believ: Amazing. This is really promising because it’s also very quick.

You said just just this one retreat and you can. See noticeable changes and we’ve we’ve had people getting some relief from migraines and things like that as well through ayahuasca, even though sometimes I feel ayahuasca gives you headache when you drink it, but I, it almost feels like it’s because like just working and there’s like blood flowing and it, and then afterwards you feel better.

I don’t know if it’s a legit guess.

Luke Jensen: Headaches. I mean it might be, headaches can cause by so many different things. Sometimes their muscle tension and the biggest thing about headaches is I’m guessing when that person is done with retreat, they’ll have less headaches because their nervous system’s more called, ’cause so many headaches are caused a of nervousness.

Sam Believ: And you mentioned what tumor, right? You do those medicines as well together and and I believe you’ve done one of the first studies on wachuma and brain scanning. So talk to us about that study. What did you find? And then maybe talk to us a little bit about wachuma.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, so we I was looking at different things to brain map and as much science has been done in the last 10 years, a lot still hasn’t been done.

And I looked at all the research. As far as I could tell, there was no brain imaging whatsoever on Wachuma. So my study was the first study to brain image wachuma. And what we did, we had 10 subjects. It’s exploratory research that’s in the field with a shaman, with wachuma. We did try to control every variable like they would in clinic, but exploratory research allows us to see things that maybe they wouldn’t.

So we had pre maps during maps, during the acute experience and post maps and. No, it was just doing this anyway, it was really fun getting 10 people together and researching it, all your friends and stuff like that. And then we have a really good shaman. But then we looked at the data and we saw a significant change each per each person’s brain and.

Each person changes differently. So this is what surprised me. I think this is part of plan medicines that needs to be understood more. And I think this will change our view of trauma as well. But the short of it is that whatever the brain needs, it seems to get. So if a person has a overactive brain, like overthinking brain, it seems to slow down.

If that person is disassociating, that seems like a heal. If they have an a D or focus issue, that seems to get better. If their brain has low power, it seems to raise the power. So it works in a way that whatever they need, including physical things like healing from head trauma, they seem to get from the plant experience and each person.

Some people probably less, some people probably more, but everyone is changing in a healthy way, which I was not expecting. ’cause I think about prescription drug. Would all push people in the same direction. But plant medicines are very unique and that they don’t,

Sam Believ: it’s interesting because that’s what we keep telling people, right?

Ayahuasca’s gonna give you what you need, not what you want, and you have proof for it. That’s pretty cool. Or pla medicines in general. Tell us about what is Chuma and what do you notice similar or different to ayahuasca? Both from experiential point of view and also from the brainwaves point of view.

Luke Jensen: So Wachuma is a cactus in the Andes has meson in it, just like peyote. But the other alkaloids are probably different and the experience is likely different. I’ve never tried peyote. So ayahuasca for me. And I’ll see some spiritual language here too, in scientific language, but I really like the spirit of it.

So ayahuasca for me, you take it at night, you take it to the shaman and you take it and loca or temple and the shabo experience in Peru is very much inward, very much going to the subconscious, very much the inner work. When we use Wachuma in our style, we go on hikes. So we’re gonna hike in the Andes Mountains and it’s not strong enough or we don’t.

Give people a strong enough dose to really send ’em too far out there because we want them to take the experience back. So while Tru is much more heart opening, it can be it’s often used in nature. So when hiking, the whole universe feels alive, the whole world’s breathing, the rocks, the trees, and the sun, and you’re connected in a certain way from a neuroscience point of view.

And we’ve seen some different indications of wachuma. It seems like a default known network in the back of the brain is being reduced. So this is your sense of self, but you think about this in a spiritual way, when that comes down, you’re gonna naturally feel more connected to the world around you.

There’s no much, so much barriers. You’re gonna be more one with everything. So the neuroscience and the feeling really go together and it’s very beautiful in that way. Yeah.

Sam Believ: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Wachuma myself or San Pedro as they call it as well. It’s a very different medicine from Ayahuasca.

But still very valuable. Interestingly, like when you talk about drinking ayahuasca and going inwards when you’re at night and in the dark, that’s kinda what you do. But have you ever tried ayahuasca during the day ceremony?

Luke Jensen: I have not. Have you?

Sam Believ: Yeah. So we, at our four, at our one week retreats, we do four ceremonies and there’s three night ceremonies and one day ceremony.

Same medicine, same moloka, just different time of the day. And people have very different experience and it’s a lot of it is this kinda like observing outside and seeing the nature. So the format we have is. People go inwards and they heal and they focus on themselves, and they move that trauma around.

And then the last day it’s like celebration and it’s it’s, it seems very different. Yeah it’s not just the medicines, but also the way you do it and how you do it. But of course, like different traditions have different rules. Like I know shi peoples are very like, they like darkness and no fire.

And in a tradition like Columbia traditional with which we work. They have fire, they have candles, and they also do day ceremonies occasionally as well. So it’s something you can try when you come visit us when we do the UFC retreat.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, I’d love to. That sounds great.

Sam Believ: This idea for the UFC retreat is still new.

We’re still working it out, so hopefully it happens. What do you think what do you personally think? 1520 UFC fighters drinking ayahuasca together. Any,

Luke Jensen: I think that’s be a lot of fun. It can be very interesting. I think the whole community is really open to ayahuasca. Especially with Joe Rogan and everything like that.

And I think that’s really good for ’em. Because I think UFC fighters and the way they live are just very visceral people. They live in a certain way. They live like a very strong way. And I think ayahuasca too. You have to have that kind of sense of of courage and bravery to go experience this and.

It’s not for the light of heart and it’s a different kind of challenge, but it’s a personal challenge in your work challenge, but I think it’s, you gotta be perfect for guys like that.

Sam Believ: Yeah. There is a lot of parallels between UFC fighters and the veterans. Do you reckon UFC fighters also have PTSD?

Luke Jensen: Yeah, I think yeah. It’s very interesting to think about. I know a couple actually, just through sheer chance and, one that kind of life can lead to head trauma, but also, trauma as well. And also often the, some of the fighters I met or know they often get into this sport because of trauma.

One of my juujitsu black belts, his mom left. Or his dad left, so he didn’t have a father in the house, so that’s why he got into jut jujitsu. He wanted to be the best fighter. He wanted be the man of the household. And so I think a lot of those things can happen from trauma as well. So yeah.

Interesting question. I think some of it, yeah, some of ’em probably do have pt, SD.

Sam Believ: So talking about PTSD, can you tell us about your own journey of working with PTSD, the role plant medicine’s played in it? ’cause I’m ’cause I’m sure it was not just like you having couple ceremonies and it just went away.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, no it’s really been like a journey of 10 years or more. I’ve always been careful that term, PTSD, I think it’s true and accurate. It has a scientific validity, but you also remember that each person’s different. Each person’s their own being and what they’ve gone through is their unique experience.

So I think part of shadow is bringing it back to that personal experience, that soul experience rather than western medicines, a one size fit all medication. So I think talk about every real. Issue people are having is a spiritual issue, and I think that’s what widely true for mental health. And PSD at its core, I think also is a spiritual issue.

Like these are spiritual problems. We don’t look at that way in the modern western view because we are very materialistic, but all our ancients look at this way. So if you look at healing a spiritual problem, like a room from war traumatic event. I, trauma itself is a new word, right? Like event of violence.

Maybe you see your kid die, or maybe you see your friend die, or maybe just being in a war zone itself, so that leaves a certain energetic imprint. And I use the term energy very specifically ’cause there’s ultimate energy to that. And that requires a, I think a certain amount of energetic healing or spiritual healing.

So I think shamanism, ayahuasca, shamanism, and shamanism in general offers a very powerful way of healing that’s outside the Western model of prescription drugs and talk therapy and things like that, like going to that core. And I think the people that have experienced PTSD and have done ayahuasca. It’s often not a very quick route.

It doesn’t happen in a few ceremonies and it takes time. And often that first retreat is sometimes the first step to a different life. But that step, that road is challenging and it’s not a perfect path or a straight path. So for me, my early ceremonies, I was tortured a lot and I had that good ceremony to describe, but my other ceremonies was like soul torture.

That torture, that spiritual torture was actually cleansing. It cleansed those wounds, it cleansed that dark energy. It cleansed those inner demons and it allowed me to be more me. And I think that’s really the true. In life, in youngian, psychology’s, individuation, connecting to your soul. And that’s what planned medicines light it do.

And that’s what the work that needs to be done with, I think, wounds of war.

Sam Believ: So soul torture is a great way to describe it. So have you ever out of curiosity, have you ever measured the shaman’s brain during the ceremony? See what’s going on there?

Luke Jensen: Not during a ceremony. I really wanna do that. I have a, I’ve brain map some shaman’s, brains outside ceremony, but that could be really interesting.

I don’t know if that’s been done. So to be honest, part of my goal in the field is to do things that really haven’t been done. There’s so much low hanging fruit and so a beautiful field, I’m wanna, I wanna see these things and it’s cool, like when I brain image wa would be like, wow, this is the first time anyone’s ever seen this.

In my field, neurofeedback field, someone went and brain mapped all these yogis around India. And it was a famous field study. No one’s ever done that with shamans yet. So they’re really cool to go around and brain map shamans during the experience and outside the experience and see what their brains look like and see what’s happening.

’cause that research, as far as I know, hasn’t been done.

Sam Believ: Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great great idea. So I’m I’m volunteering my Sharman for some scanning. I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to ask him, but he’s generally, he’s pretty cool and pretty open to new things. We’re doing this documentary and he was in it, and he is open to talk about it.

He’s he’s not a shy guy, so I think he’ll be pretty cool if we measure him and then we can measure those moments and be like, my. My shamans signal is stronger than yours,

Luke Jensen: the, it’s funny because a lot of the local shamans I’ve noticed really like the brain map. They like the science and it surprised me.

It’s lots of the westerners like, Hey, what do you bring the science stuff in here for? And the Peruvians, at least the Peruvians I’ve met that really into it. So that’s been cool.

Sam Believ: Yeah, the because the Westerners expect indigenous people to be stuck in time and like never really adjust or improve or, they want them to be like exactly as they are because that’s their kind of their own fetishized version of that’s my previous head of facilitations, he used to say.

The cult of magical brown men. It’s like they’re perfect. They’re, they know they’re, they have no downside. They’re like almost not human like God-like.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, no, that could be whole podcast. I think it’s very interesting how we project our ideals onto them and that there’s these perfect happy jungle people.

And I think one thing to realize as shamans is that they can have tons of ability and their personal life can still be messed up, or they can have their own issues with alcoholism, but be amazing in the space. So they’re very different people. Learn that culture and who they are adds a depth to it.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but they’re real people. Just like we’re real people. We can’t put them on this, we can’t make them cardboard cutouts of what we want ’em to be.

Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s my, my shaman, he is a great shaman. He is indigenous, comes from lineage, grows his own was in the jungle, he is, he’s pretty modern.

He wears sneakers he uses WhatsApp and stuff like that. Which is actually very useful when you try to organize anything but people, it’s oh, like they, they imagine like he has to be like bare feet and it’s like civilization happened to them as well. Like they, like right now in the deepest jungle of Amazon, you can have a starlink and it kinda creates new challenges.

Like I’ve seen this, oh yeah. Video about people getting starlink and then they all got addicted to their phones because they never had tv, so they did not develop the resistance. But yeah, going back to science, like we, we know how works because obviously. I’ve had a couple thousand people at my retreat alone, and they come and then they leave and they feel so much better.

And then I meet them, like at Maps we we met at Maps and there were three other people that came to or before and they’re like, oh my God. They were like, two of them were becoming a therapist now because they had this experience and they just loved it and they want to explore it and they’re like, you.

Changed my life. It’s a very uncomfortable for me always to receive the praise. But I know it works because I, ’cause I’ve seen so many stories, but now we sorta almost need science to prove it. It’s kinda it’s guilty until proven not guilty. We have to do this process now.

So talk about that, the science and the whole fact that we needed to prove that something that we know already works.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, no, I think it’s a really good point because so many people come down and we know it works. Their individual lives are changed. I work at a retreat and it’s motto was we change the world one person at a time.

And I think that’s true, but also think that if we bring the data, if we bring the science, say, over a course of a couple years, and it’s one of my goals to assemble. Of brains. That’d be such a huge analysis that science would have to look at that or at they should. Science is a modern religion, right?

Everyone’s a skeptic. If it’s not, if their doctors doesn’t say so, if it’s on the news or science doesn’t say so. It’s not true. You and I know those experiences are powerful, but to change the culture between the civilization this way it is now we have to approach it in a scientific way. I think that’s why we want to build up the data, and I think the more data, the more databases we have on these.

These beautiful changes that happen over and over again that’ll really give us a step forward to changing the culture.

Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s interesting you said the retreats motto was healing the world one person at a time. Our motto at La Wire is now Connect, heal, grow. But when we were brainstorming the Moto, I, my, my personal favorite was healing the World one Cup at a time.

So I guess I’m not that original.

Luke Jensen: I mean it’s probably not, they’re not original. It’s probably there’s like a fundamental truth, archival truth that we’re all picking up on. Wait, this will spread this cup to this cup and this person, more people. That’s true.

It’s definitely true and I think we’re picking up that idea that ayahuasca’s working through each one of us and that phrase be the change that we hear. And so true. If you change and people around you like, Hey, what’s different? What’d you do? Oh, I did ayahuasca that, that’s reds. So it’s definitely true.

Sam Believ: So you say science is a modern religion. I also heard you say in another podcast that it’s a problem that we’re lacking religion. Why is it

Luke Jensen: oh, I think that at the core, western civilization is lacking a grounding spirituality. And you feel like any healthy civilization, it had a spiritual outlook to its civilization.

As a people, as a nation, as a group of nations, they always had this spiritual idea that Gods are watching after them, or they had a spiritual mission as a people beyond their lives, beyond just acquiring. Material possessions. And when you look at civilizations decline, you often see that spiritual spark that fueled ’em in the beginning, start to leave or start to fade.

I think we’re in that stage in western civilization where we’re seeing that spark, fade, and to really have a healthy civilization, which requires healthy people, right? It requires a people that you know are. Have like mind and believe in a spiritual mission and something higher than themselves, that you need a core group of people to have a healthy civilization.

So I really look at what we are doing as a higher order of work that hopefully will lead to more people doing this and effect the civilization and change in a healthy way. I think most people’s religion today is either politics or science, or a combination of both. That they’re constantly obsessed with what people are doing on tv, what people are doing in a city a thousand miles away.

And the modern priests are the scientists, but the scientists have their own religion. Science is a method of observation. It’s not to tell you what’s right or wrong, it’s merely a tool, and we’re using that tool to study planned medicines, for example. But I. These research universities, for example, have billions of dollars of funding and have spent hardly any of that in this kind of research, which is mind-boggling.

So it gives you a view of a civilization’s priorities where they put their energy at.

Sam Believ: Yeah. The problem with science is somebody has to pay for it. So if they pay, if they. If you’re a pharmaceutical company, you will pay for the science around your product because AYA was in a way, does not really belong to anyone.

Science is it comes from like churches. I know there were some science done in Brazil and stuff like that, but yeah, in the end some, someone has to pay for it. That’s why science can be biased. One way or another, one direction or another.

Luke Jensen: But yeah, just that just really quickly, like science today.

Yeah, exactly. That these huge corporations and pharmaceutical companies, but 19th century, there were explorers in science. There were a, Edison and Tesla, and Jefferson, many different inventors were just a single person doing something. That could, that back then it could make an impact.

But today, the civilizations has changed and how that works.

Sam Believ: Yeah. In the way, let’s say I run an Ayahuasca retreat and I observe thousand people every year healing through ayahuasca. That’s science. Like I know it works, but it’s like the problem is now, like how are you gonna prove it? ’cause nobody gonna believe you.

I’m working on it. And talking to you and also to other people about like creating the proper paperwork. So it’s not just an observation but a legit science. How does how does one do science these days? You published some studies. Tell us the process.

Luke Jensen: So for me, like I said, I was the Marine Corps in Afghanistan and I was infantry in Afghanistan and I never really saw myself doing this.

I became a field researcher basically. And my mentor’s company has supported me in many ways ’cause they’re interested in this research. So keep in mind. Sciences always have to be done in a university setting or academic setting. And probably the best science is actually done outside those settings.

And if you, and so in the 19th century, for example, many of those scientists had sponsors that just sponsored their work in the private sector. There was no such thing as huge university grants. And I think we’re gonna have to start looking at different ways to approach science because the way the university system works and the grant system works is that.

Now everything’s so established, they’re not gonna risk it on something that’s speculative. They’re gonna use that science to re to say their ideas are right over and over again. ’cause that’s where the money’s at. And then they’ll get it right, but they won’t use it to risk something different.

Sam Believ: Yeah. We have a big pharma promoting different stuff now. We need big ayahuasca. Promoting ACA studies. I believe in citizen science, like we should all be a bit of scientists. And now, we have YouTube to learn and chat GPT and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing anything anymore.

And you yourself proving it because you’re learning neuroscience by yourself. Like you went from being a veteran to now. Finding your mentor. Talk to us about that process. How is it ’cause you, you’re not in the university, but I’m sure more than some graduates.

Luke Jensen: As far as brainwaves go, I probably know, as much as most graduates. So if you go to a university degree for neuroscience, you got a lot of the chemistry and the structures of the brain and those, minute chemical reactions. So the field that I do with brainwaves. There’s not really a college degree for it.

You have to go to the people in the world that know it. Some people have college degrees, probably most people do have an advanced degree, but not everyone does. And it’s really this western model where you think that healing has to look a certain way or science has to learn a certain way or even expertise.

The shamans you work with, they’ll have a written diploma from the University of Shamanism. They’re, they have a lineage and tons of experience and no one questions that, so I think we have to look at those things different way, because that allows us to take in new information.

So the credential system also puts people in certain box and how they think. You need people to think outside the box, not in the box.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Not to take away too much from the science, but if you were. Let’s say choosing who’s gonna sit with you in a ceremony? Would you choose someone who just completed one year training in some fancy facilitation school?

Or like a shaman who has no, doesn’t know how to read, but has been doing it generationally. It’s someone who’s read a cookbook or somebody who’s been cooking their entire life. What’s more valuable? So just, somehow we need to like rebalance this. It seems a little bit biased now.

Luke Jensen: I agree. And actually when I’m sitting in the jungle, like I, I’ve been in the deep jungle in Peru and Amazon, just me and my friend and a shaman for like weeks, months at that time. And those, all those ideas that we have of way things should be all those, they’re breaking down. We realize we have so many constructs we can strain ourselves in and our thoughts.

And that really affects so many things and it’s constant process to keep an eye on those.

Sam Believ: Like we, we had the booth at Maps who came, visited us. I think my head of facilitation was a little bit my previous head of facilitation, he was a little upset because somebody came to him and asked what methodology do you use?

And he is whatever our shaman is doing, there’s like a lot of the stuff doesn’t have a fancy name, but people are both, they come and they wanna throw terms around. It was a weird experience. Being at maps there’s a lot of weirdness in the psychedelic space in the psychedelic science space.

So

Luke Jensen: Coming from the jungle to there, is it a huge shift?

Sam Believ: It’s I imagine that you have this it’s like reinventing the bicycle, but let’s say it’s like inventing. Reinventing the cars. It’s like in the jungle you have this imaginary highway full of cars and it’s just working.

And here you have these people like breaking their brains, trying to figure out how to make it work or explain it with words. It’s here it is it’s working. Just what are you doing? Like, why are you trying to reinvent it? But I also understand that there’s value to science, and this is why at Lare we’re gonna start doing more science, because I’m just.

Honestly, it’s a little fed up as well with people, not valuing the real results. So it’s if you own papers, we’ll give you papers, we’ll get you papers. ’cause that’s almost, to be honest, that’s like an easy part. But talking about science a little bit, can you explain like brainwaves I know people say alpha brainwaves, but gamma can you just give us like a little tiny course on it?

Luke Jensen: Yeah. Your brainwaves, your energy signature of your brain. So you have the four core brainwaves, delta, theta, alpha and beta and then other brain wave gamma. And each of these brainwaves, their waves going across the brain and by reading how they appear in the brain, we can see a lot about what’s going on.

And these brainwaves are basically the physical structures of the brains, millions of neurons firing at once that creates that wave. So in a way for someone from your retreat, I forget who she was, I mentioned the brain mapping. She goes, oh, is that like auras? And I’m like I go, no. Because we’re taking an energy signature of that person.

So for me. It’s kinda like a, an acupuncturist that looks at the tongue of the hologram and sees the health of the body. We can look at those brainwaves and see different things. That’s that person’s energetic signature coming from the brain.

Sam Believ: Interesting. That’s a, it’s an interesting way to explain it because some, as you said yourself through ayahuasca, you’ve seen auras of different people.

One time I was in the ceremony and they showed me. I could look inside of the person and see like different colors of different organs, like which one’s healthy and which one’s not. Hope I could do it on demand, but unfortunately it’s no, I’m not a shaman yet. But if, do you reckon the one day you’ll just be able to scan somebody’s brain be without many machinery, you’ll just be like, your color of your aura is green, so you have alpha waves.

Luke Jensen: I hope so because I’m gonna continue my own. Training that field of the shamanic arts. And I think it’s very interesting because the science is proving that we do have auras, we do have energy fields, and there’s probably fields we can’t read yet, like more subtle fields like quantum fields. But yeah, I think auras will exist and science advances.

I think the 21st century will be a century of consciousness if we do this right. We have to change the situation. And once we realized that there’s a consciousness and energy inside of us, this can really shift our understanding of ourselves, of humanity. And yeah, I’m really proud to be part of that movement and I’m having me, like you, people like you who are part of that movement as well, because to understand our energy beings first is just critical to who we are.

Sam Believ: Yeah was it Nico at Tesla that said that, if you don’t understand the nature of the universe, you need to understand waves and everything is a wave. I wish I was good at quotes. I’m

Luke Jensen: it was frequency. Everything’s frequency, but I could be wrong. Everything’s set up right. And if we look at everything as a vibration and not as a solid.

Everything’s moving this co this constant cosmic dance, right? So like what the yogis talk about, this cosmic dance of the universe. We’re seeing it now through science and I think we’re keep seeing more of that.

Sam Believ: Cool. I have another meeting planned unfortunately, so I have to wrap it up. Just last question.

Is ego default mode network. What’s that connection? Because I always wanted to ask our neuroscientists about that.

Luke Jensen: Yeah. So ego is connected to default mode network. It’s a sense of self. And obviously there’s healthy ways and unhealthy ways, but in Western world, we’re seeing this over connection with ego in, in the default mode.

Networks overworking over connected. So planned medicines allows us to dissolve that or weaken it for a certain period of time for us to shift that energy.

Sam Believ: Cool. Beautiful explanation. Any any last words you wanna tell to the audience or tell them where they can find more about you and about your work?

Luke Jensen: Yeah, so have a website in neuro enlightenment dot com and that goes into my research and what we do. And two published studies in that website and if anyone wants to reach out to me with any questions about what I do, feel free.

Sam Believ: Cool. Look, thank you so much for the interview. Really interesting angle, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in person and doing this crazy experiment about on the UFC fighters.

Luke Jensen: Yeah, it sounds like fun. I’m looking forward to it.

Sam Believ: Okay, guys. You’ve been listening to our Oscar podcast. As always, we, the host, Andie, and I will see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like wherever it is you’re listening.

Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity.

Lara Connect, heal. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.